Deerhunter “He Would Have Laughed”

I don’t like the word friend very much. Its meaning has been devalued by our culture; in my mind it connotes a positive but mostly superficial relationship, like a more sentimental version of a “buddy.” When people tell me that I am a good friend or something like that, part of me has to remind myself that the person is probably being very sincere and giving me a nice compliment, so I shouldn’t feel insulted or marginalized. The classic values of friendship — of close friendship — are very important to me. I just wish we used better, more precise words to do justice to these kinds of relationships. “Friend” seems so small, trivial, and empty to me. We can do better, especially if we just describe connections with others on the terms of those particular relationships rather than use any one word to describe a wide variety of relationships.

“Friend” is the word that rings out most in “He Would Have Laughed,” the final song on Deerhunter’s new album. “I know where my friends are now,” “Where did my friends go?,” “Where do your friends go?” These lines cut to the emotional core of the piece — loneliness, confusion, the self-defeating isolation of someone who keeps everyone at a distance. The song was written in memory of Jay Reatard, who was by most accounts a rather difficult and angry guy. I hear the song as being about the loss of a frustrating person, the kind who shuts you out, rejects your sentimentality, and behaves like an asshole. The kind of person you love and respect in spite of themselves, or how they treat you. I don’t hear judgment, or even grief in this music. All I hear is empathy and kindness.

I think this song is a major breakthrough for Bradford Cox and Deerhunter. To my ears, this is their most sophisticated and graceful piece of music. The arpeggiated guitar parts and synthesizer tones in this are almost certainly the most beautiful sounds Cox has set to tape; the way the percussion gently guides us from section to section is subtle and lovely, especially for a band whose drummer is commonly derided as a weak link. “He Would Have Laughed” is as pretty as it is devastating. It seems to stretch out in all directions, follows a tangent into a distinct second movement, and abruptly stops, all in the pursuit of answers to its many questions. The sudden conclusion is the punchline of a cosmic joke. He would have laughed.

Buy it from Amazon.

Marnie Stern “Risky Biz”

What kills me about “Risky Biz” is that it mostly sounds optimistic. She’s singing about knowing that she’ll have to give up, she’s singing about how whatever she does is not enough, but despite miserable chances, she’s holding on to the hope that things will turn out right. Why? Because he outshines them all, duh. And so the anxiety is somehow worth it, even when it’s so obvious that she’s giving up too much of herself, and she should just let go, cut her losses, move on. It’s so sad, and so sweet. The longing comes through in every note she plays, every aching syllable she sings, but most especially in that fragile, wordless backing vocal that punctuates the verses. That’s the pain, hidden deep below the surface, but totally obvious all along.

Buy it from Amazon.

The xx @ United Palace Theater 10/2/2010

Intro / Crystalised / Heart Skipped A Beat / Basic Space / Fantasy / Shelter / Show Me Love / Teardrops / VCR / Islands / Night Time / Infinity // Stars

The xx “Shelter”

A few times in this show, Oliver Sim mentioned that it was hard to believe that his band was playing the United Palace — an enormous, ornate church/theater that is only a bit smaller than Radio City Music Hall — only a year after starting out at the tiny, no-frills Mercury Lounge. Relentless touring, licensing, and especially enthusiastic word of mouth has served them very well — I definitely got the feeling that a large portion of Saturday’s audience, like myself, hadn’t gotten around to seeing them in concert yet, despite the fact that they’ve played at least ten shows of increasing size in New York City alone since last fall. (They just headlined a free show at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield only two months ago.) I am certainly glad that I held out for this large indoor gig, which allowed them to go full-on with their excellent, thoughtfully crafted light show. The lighting design was crucial in building up the sense of drama they were creating on stage and keeping the band largely hidden in shadows, adding to their mystique.

It makes a lot of sense to me that the xx would catch as they have. Without any perceptible trace of cynicism, they were able to fill a niche in the marketplace that’s been inexplicably underserved in recent years — dark, emotional, genuinely sexy pop music. I mean, given the sheer number of bands out there, how did it take so long for anyone to competently find the middle ground between mid-90s trip hop/R&B and Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”? It seems like such a no-brainer, but when it comes down to it, without the raw talent, charisma, and vocal chemistry, the xx could easily miss their mark entirely. I used to think that Sim’s voice was inferior to that of Romy Madley Croft, but I’ve come around to liking him quite a lot — there’s a great amount of character in his voice, and his low-key intensity complements Croft’s earnest fragility rather well. This music would fail without total commitment, and that’s what they give. Judging by the audience response, it’s also when they get in return.

Buy it from Amazon.

Stornoway “I Saw You Blink”

I reckon this would be a pretty good song at least a few different ways, as it is pretty well-constructed and has some very appealing hooks. Nevertheless, the arrangement here is just about perfect in the way it is constantly shifting and adding new sounds without calling much attention to them, or having too much sound get cluttered in the mix. It’s highly dynamic yet subtle, and the result is an easygoing yet brisk piece of autumnal indie-pop. They really get the most out of this pleasant melody, and put the emphasis in all the right places, hitting the emotional marks without over- or understating anything. The arrangement of this song is credited to the full band, and you can tell — this is clearly the product of thoughtful, clever musicians working together as a unit rather than just a bunch of players doing their parts and calling it a day.

Buy it from Amazon.

David Bowie “TVC 15”

A lot of paranoid, cynical songs have been written about television as a corrupting, socially destructive medium. Most of them seem kinda quaint and silly now, particularly in the era of internet saturation and smart phones. In light of much bigger problems, it’s hard to take something like “Television, the drug of a nation!” seriously, and knowing what life is like now, if you go back over old Zoo TV footage, the notion that clicking through 57 channels of television amounts to “INFORMATION OVERLOAD!!!” is kinda laughable. Nevertheless, as much as this stuff comes out seeming ham-fisted and clunky today, the artists were right to be concerned about media, and the increased mediation of daily life. Being wrong about the specifics doesn’t mean they weren’t basically right about the future.

Of all the songs I know about television, David Bowie’s “TVC 15” is the finest, and also the earliest. It’s also the funniest, the smartest, the grooviest, and the one that has aged the best. Some of that comes down to the fact that it takes place in the future, and the technology is beyond what we know now. More importantly, though, there’s not any particular judgment in the song. It’s basically a surreal love story — some guy’s girlfriend literally disappears into the immersive, holographic world of his television set, and he ponders the possibility of jumping in and finding her. The song isn’t a strident comment on propaganda or a statement in favor of a more authentic existence. I mean, how could it be — when Bowie wrote this he was obsessed with Nazis and in a state of severe cocaine psychosis! If anything, the song is really about that paranoia and detachment from reality, and the fear that he could lose the ability to tell the difference between real life and colorful fantasy. And, perhaps accidentally, that’s how “TVC 15” resonates today — not as a condemnation of virtual life or an information glut or an overdose of escapism, but as a song that approaches this intersection of various forms of reality as a weird, scary, lonely, fun, and romantic place to be.

Buy it from Amazon.

Glasser “Apply”

I’m not feeling well. This song lines up with how I feel, basically — antsy and restless but also kinda zoned out and melancholy. It sounds like a dull, persistent headache with a good beat and a pretty voice. It seems to be about sleep and dreams, and feeling stuck, like you have no control over your body or mind. It shoots for catharsis, but I don’t think it gets there. Which is fine, really. Sometimes the point is that escaping some mental or physical trap seems totally futile, even if it’s just a passing phase.

Buy it from Amazon.

Electric Six @ Bowery Ballroom 9/25/2010

After Hours / Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother) / Dirty Ball / Body Shot / Future Is In The Future / Jam It In The Hole / Improper Dancing / Danger! High Voltage / Slices Of You / It Ain’t Punk Rock / Formula 409 / Dance Epidemic / I Buy The Drugs / Down At McDonellzzz // The Rubberband Man / Gay Bar / Gay Bar Part Two / She’s White

Electric Six audiences are always a weird mix of misfits. There’s not really any obvious profile for E6 fandom, though there’s pretty much always a lot of rowdy dudes. This is generally a good thing about their shows — some bands are cursed with super self-conscious fans, but Electric Six crowds are all but guaranteed to be incredibly energetic and eager to participate. I would have loved to have been more involved for this show. I was feeling pretty sick, and so I only had enough energy for so much movement, and could not even try to sing along because my voice was so busted. Nevertheless, it was a good time, and the typical highlights — the fist-pumping for “McDonellzzz,” the extended breakdown and improvised “my drummer…” rant in “Future Is In The Future,” tons of ultra-straight dudes flipping out for “Gay Bar” — were as great as ever. At the end of the show, Dick Valentine told the audience to “tell others what you saw here tonight.” Well, consider that done. You’re going to have a good time at an E6 show. Try it the next time they come around your town.

Electric Six “It Ain’t Punk Rock”

Not long ago, Dick Valentine was saying something to the effect of how a lot of his lyrics were just him saying nonsense that sounded good in the tune. This is a time-tested strategy for a lot of pop music, and it’s certainly the case for “It Ain’t Punk Rock,” a song that deliberately fucks with you by starting on a line that seems pointed — “it ain’t punk rock ’til the punk rockers say it’s punk rock” — before taking a turn into Valentine singing the phrase “number eighty-eight” over and over again for no discernible reason other than that it sounds good. If there is a point to the song, that would seem to be it — you can make any dumb thing sound cool, and what is punk rock other than a bunch of stuff that sounds and feels cool? But you know, people get to declare what is cool or not, so you know, it only gets to be punk rock if other people say so.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield, Central Park 9/24/2010

Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / Frontwards / Spit On A Stranger / Shady Lane / Date With IKEA / Grounded / Cut Your Hair / Perfume-V / Conduit For Sale! / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Stereo / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Gold Soundz / The Hexx / We Dance / Silent Kid / Unfair / No Life Singed Her / Trigger Cut / Stop Breathin’ / Ell Ess Two / Here // Rattled By The Rush / Heaven Is A Truck / Summer Babe /// Kennel District / Debris Slide / Range Life

After the glow, the scene, the stage, the set…

The night after my last Pavement show — possibly ever! — I found myself wishing that I could just go back to Central Park and see another Pavement show. Like, somehow, going to the park and seeing Pavement every night could just be the new normal. But alas, Friday night was it for me, and for all the moments that were bittersweet, it was mostly just a total blast. All the Pavement shows I saw last week had their own character, and this one was the victory lap. They were on, and so was the audience. A lot of singing along, a lot of physical movement, a lot of unrestrained glee for these wonderful songs, and these charming men. I know I’ll be seeing Malkmus again before too long with the Jicks, and that there will be opportunities to see Spiral and Mark perform again, but man, I am going to miss Bob Nastanovich. I wish that he could just get some kind of gig — I don’t care, a podcast! A podcast would be enough! — that kept him in our lives. He’s a true gem, and there’s just nothing else like him in all of rock and roll. More bands should consider finding their own Bob Nastanovich.

Pavement “Grounded” [Live in London, 4/11/1997]

Every time they played “Grounded”, I did this thing when that huge, majestic riff comes in — tilt my head back, get up on my tiptoes as it ascended, and then “crashed” down as the motif ended with Steve West’s drum fill. It felt like the right response, it had just the right physical and emotional resonance. I will maintain forever that Wowee Zowee would’ve sold a lot more copies if “Grounded” was the lead single. Pavement’s singles erred on the side of the sillier, more novel tunes, but I think 1995 was the right time to remind listeners that the band had a darker, more emotional side, and could write this ambiguous yet totally devastating ballad about the inner life of some patrician doctor. It certainly would’ve made more sense on the alt-rock radio of that time than anything else on the record. (Would any other Pavement song make sense coming after “Glycerine”?) All these years later, it’s taken its rightful place among the band’s best-loved classics, a cornerstone of the reunion tour setlist. Most of Pavement’s best live songs are due to the energy level or opportunities for improvisation, but with “Grounded,” it’s just about the song’s intensity. It has an unusual and beautiful power.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield in Central Park 9/23/2010

Grounded / Gold Soundz / Silent Kid / Date With IKEA / Unfair / Spit On A Stranger / Rattled By The Rush / Stereo / Loretta’s Scars / Frontwards / Stop Breathin’ / Shoot The Singer / Trigger Cut / Cut Your Hair / Fight This Generation / Two States / Fin / Summer Babe / She Believes / Range Life // Kennel District / Shady Lane / Starlings of the Slipstream / Our Singer / Heckler Spray – Mellow Jazz Docent tease / In The Mouth A Desert / We Dance / Box Elder

Sunday was the warm-up, Tuesday was the classic, Wednesday was the rain night, and this…this was the weird show. Malkmus was in an odd mood — lower energy than the past few nights, a little cranky, a little sloppy — but it came together, especially as the set went on and things became more loose and goofy. I appreciate that each of these shows has had its own character, that I’m seeing different types of Pavement concerts. Ultimately, this was the kind of show the band is best known for. Even if this wasn’t them at their very best, it was a very good and entertaining show with some very memorable and emotional moments tossed in with lots of self-deprecating jokes from Malkmus, especially silly antics from Bob, and a noticeably dark tone in the improvised sequences.

Pavement “Our Singer”

“Our Singer” was very rarely played in the old days; it only just came back to the sets in the final weeks of this reunion tour. When it’s performed, it’s just Malkmus and Steve West, and in last night’s performance, Spiral and Bob walked on for a couple shouts. This was one of the best and most moving performances of the week, spare and loose but very much in touch with the raw, anxious emotion at the heart of the song. A lot of songs from the Slanted & Enchanted era are about waiting for things to happen or bracing for potential failure; “Our Singer” is the one that puts that theme front and center without doing anything to obscure the point. There’s a lot of hope in the lyrics, a feeling that he’s right on the cusp of something worthwhile even when he’s singing “I’ve dreamt of this but it never comes.” I’ve always thought of this song as music for the dawn, alert and awake and about to face the day. Maybe it’s the day. Maybe it’s just another day. You never get a sense of the stakes. That sounds true to me.

Buy it from Amazon.

Elsewhere, I did a chat interview with NPR’s Jacob Ganz about these reunion shows over at The Record blog.

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield, Central Park 9/22/2010

Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / Perfume-V / Trigger Cut / Unfair / Range Life / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Spizzle Trunk / Shady Lane / Fight This Generation / Summer Babe / Cut Your Hair / Kennel District / Gold Soundz / Zurich Is Stained / Stereo / [break while lightning storm clears the field] / The Hexx / Two States / Spit On A Stranger / Grounded / Silent Kid / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Stop Breathin’ / Date With IKEA / Feed ‘Em To The Lions (Linden) / Here // Conduit For Sale!

It had to rain at one of these shows, right? There was a thunder and lightning storm through the majority of this set, necessitating a 8-10 minute break after “Stereo” to let the storm pass over the park area. This was obviously not optimal conditions for the show, but it was a bonding experience for the audience, and only emboldened people’s enthusiasms. You don’t wait an entire year, eleven years, or your whole life to get put off by a bit of rain, right? The band was in good form — not as spectacular as the previous night, but still more or less in the zone. “The Hexx” and “Zurich Is Stained” were my personal highlights, though I think the most memorable moments came during major crowd-pleasers like “Stereo,” “Here”, and the triumphant, defiant version of “Conduit For Sale!” that closed out the night.

Pavement “Conduit For Sale!” [Live in London, 12/14/1992]

“Conduit” has always been one of Pavement’s great live songs. It’s one of the few that inspires a lot of thrashing about, and the only one that allows a significant spotlight for every member of the band. I still have a very vivid memory of the first time I saw them play it when I was 17. I remember Bob stalking the stage as the song shifted into the “no one’s gonna save me, no one’s gonna make me rearrange” part, and Spiral was kinda shimmying, and Malkmus was manhandling his guitar and shouting wordless exclamations after each refrain. There’s such a strange and wonderful dynamic between these very, very specific personalities, and “Conduit For Sale!” is the ideal showcase. Last night, it was a surreal, vaguely violent catharsis. Playing “Here” and “Conduit” at the end was like Pavement’s version of ending the show on “We Will Rock You”/”We Are The Champions,” but in reverse order of sentiment.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pavement @ Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, 9/21/2010

Shady Lane / Frontwards / Heckler Spray / Ell Ess Two / Starlings of the Slipstream / Stereo / Kennel District / Grounded / Rattled By The Rush / We Dance / In The Mouth A Desert / Perfume-V / Unfair / Fin / Gold Soundz / Debris Slide / Range Life / Trigger Cut / Cut Your Hair / Perfect Depth / Fight This Generation / Box Elder // Date With IKEA / Shoot The Singer / Conduit For Sale! / Silent Kid / Heaven Is A Truck / Stop Breathin’

At this point, I have seen and heard a huge number of Pavement and Malkmus shows, in person and on recordings. I can confidently say with a fair degree of authority that last night’s Pavement show in Central Park was among the best shows they have ever played. They were on, they were playful, Stephen was in good voice and in an obviously upbeat mood. The set was long and full of wonderful songs, including two — “Perfect Depth” and “Heaven Is A Truck” — that made their reunion tour debuts. The former was a lovely surprise; the latter was gorgeous and extended into a brief meandering jam. The band was very sharp and together, far tighter than most people ever remember them as being, but still loose enough to have that tossed-off swagger and swing that is crucial to their appeal and impossible for other groups to replicate. I have three more nights of Pavement ahead of me, and now I’m wondering if they can top this performance.

Pavement “Shoot The Singer” (Live in St. Louis 10/14/1999)

This was the song at the top of my wishlist for these shows, and it didn’t disappoint. There is a delicacy to “Shoot The Singer;” it’s the closest Malkmus has ever come to approximating the crisp moonlit sound of R.E.M. circa Murmur. Actually, it might be the closest anyone has come! The actual subject matter is obscured, but the emotion of it is not — melancholy and slightly bitter, overwhelming romanticism pegged down by clear-eyed pragmatism. It’s the song where the drama fades, and the music at the end — particular in the live arrangement — slowly drifts down from fantasy back to earth. Stephen keeps telling us “don’t expect, don’t expect, don’t expect.” Yeah, yeah, we know. Easier said than done.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pavement @ Williamsburg Waterfront 9/19/2010

Cut Your Hair / Date With IKEA / Rattled By The Rush / Ell Ess Two / Grounded / Frontwards / Shady Lane / Unfair / Perfume-V / Fight This Generation / Silent Kid / Box Elder / Stop Breathin’ / Two States / Father To A Sister Of Thought / Heckler Spray / In The Mouth A Desert / We Dance / Summer Babe / Fin / Stereo // Spit On A Stranger / Trigger Cut / Starlings Of The Slipstream / Gold Soundz / Kennel District / Range Life

When I saw Pavement at the Pitchfork festival back in July, it was a very intense experience. I would’ve been freaking out no matter what, but my energy level was pushed to an extreme by a large and very enthusiastic audience. Pure fanboy bliss. This show was a lot more mellow. There were definitely a lot of people having a good time, but this wasn’t a crowd of excitable superfans. It was more just like a normal show. Which is weird, right? I may be seeing Pavement play almost every day this week, but it’s not like you get to see a Pavement show every day. My theory is that all the hardcore people will be at the Central Park shows, which were the first reunion tour gigs to go on sale a year ago, and this Williamsburg show was for the less committed stragglers. This was a great gig and I had a wonderful time and got to see the band perform songs I’d never seen them do before, but I’m looking at this one as a warm-up. The main event begins tonight.

Memorable moment: During “We Dance,” Bob brought out Stephen’s wife Jessica, and danced sweetly with her on the right side of the stage. After the song, Stephen said “That was for Jessica Hutchins. She put out on that one.”

Pavement “Box Elder” (Live in Hollywood, 4/24/1994)

I don’t think I ever appreciated “Box Elder” as much as I did Sunday night. It’s a simple, compact tune, and aside from a couple strange lines, one of the most direct songs Stephen Malkmus has ever written. It’s from their very first 7″, and it begins a theme that carries on through Malkmus’ most recent material: Hey, I’m moving on, can’t stick around here. Gotta keep going. See ya. This tour is about as sentimental as Malkmus gets, and well…he certainly doesn’t seem that way up on stage. “Box Elder” resonated with me because I was connecting its desire to move on with someone else, but maybe I was also tapping into something in Malkmus’ performance — he’s here and present, but he’s got his eyes on the exits, and ready to go somewhere new.

Buy it from Amazon.

of Montreal @ Terminal 5 9/18/2010

Black Lion Massacre / Coquet Coquette / Our Riotous Defects / Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider / Godly Intersex / Sex Karma / Girl Named Hello / Suffer For Fashion / St. Exquisite’s Confessions (with Nate “Rocket” Wonder on guest vocals) / Like A Tourist / Enemy Gene (with Janelle Monáe) / Hydra Fancies / She’s A Rejecter / Tonight / Casualty Of You / Around The Way / Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse / For Our Elegant Caste / A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger // Thriller – Wanna Be Startin’ Something – PYT

of Montreal “Like A Tourist”

There was some very negative buzz for the first few shows of this current of Montreal tour, and though I don’t doubt that the band was rusty and hadn’t totally figured out their approach to the setlist and presentation, I can assure you that they got over that stuff in time for the NYC shows, and that the NYC audience looooved it. Seriously though, what is not to love? The False Priest material went over pretty well, and the hits from Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping, not to mention the Michael Jackson medley at the conclusion, are total audience nukes. There’s been some complaint about the band’s show slipping into spectacle for spectacle’s sake, but I don’t think they’ve gone overboard at all, and if anything, they have streamlined this aspect of the stage show over time. There have been times in the past when I have seen the band and the skits during the songs come across like “hey, put on some costumes and get weird out there,” but in this show, the costumes were more evocative, and there was some vague narrative implied in which Kevin Barnes was always either confronting some freaky creatures or getting roped into some kind of ritual. I suppose I understand why some people may be getting bored with or alienated by of Montreal’s current direction, but I wasn’t with any of those people and I’m very glad about that.

Buy it from Amazon.

Janelle Monáe @ Terminal 5 9/18/2010

Dance Or Die / Faster / Locked Inside / Smile / Sincerely, Jane / Wondaland / Mushrooms & Roses / Cold War / Tightrope / Come Alive

Janelle Monáe “Dance Or Die”

Every so often during Janelle Monáe’s performance I would think: How is this woman for real? This is getting away from the songs, the singing, the dancing — there’s just something about her that seems just beyond real, as if she’s a drawing or cartoon character made flesh. She and her band glide effortlessly from strength to strength, with an easy mastery over showmanship. It’s kinda amazing just how much production value they get simply from sticking to a black and white formal wear dress code. There were some points in the show in which the of Montreal company joined with her back-up players for some performance art, but that was never as exciting as what Janelle Monáe and her sidemen did on their own, or dropping black and white balloons into the crowd during “Tightrope.” They’ve got a great show, and as much as they come off like total pros, you can tell they’re still figuring out all their tricks. This was an elaborate performance for an opening act — I can’t wait to see what they do once they’ve got a headliner’s budget.

Buy it from Amazon.

It has been interesting to watch the popular alt-rock bands of my teen years adjust to their aging audiences and major changes to the business model of selling and marketing music. Pearl Jam settled into becoming grunge’s answer to a jam band, and the Foo Fighters became its equivalent to Tom Petty. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead eventually shed their major label contracts and leveraged their cult and cred to successfully give away and/or sell their music online on their own terms. Green Day kept their focus on being a band for teenagers and stayed huge. All of those guys aged gracefully and made good decisions. And then, of course, there is Billy Corgan.

If Thom Yorke and Trent Reznor are the Gallants in this scenario, Corgan is the Goofus. The guy seems doomed to always make the wrong decision and rub people the wrong way. Since reforming the Smashing Pumpkins, he has done a lot to erode fan interest, from releasing mediocre or straight-up awful new music to embarking on a tour in which he regularly and deliberately insulted his own audience.

The Smashing Pumpkins “Freak”

More recently, he seems intent on undoing some of that damage. The current Pumpkins tour has featured a more reasonable balance of new material and radio hits without any obnoxious antics. Even better, most of the new songs released for free on the Pumpkins site have been pretty good! I mean, it’s nothing extraordinary, but aside from the dreary “A Song For A Son,” the Teargarden by Kaleidyscope tracks have been tuneful, totally decent songs that play to Corgan’s strengths as a writer and performer. “Freak” in particular is probably the most radio-friendly song he has produced in a long time.

Corgan’s current model for releasing music is both simple and weirdly complex. The simple part: He is giving away a new song on his site every few weeks. The complex part: It’s all part of an eventual 44 song album with a cringe-inducing name, and every four tracks comprise an EP that gets its own physical release. There are obvious advantages to this strategy — fans get a steady trickle of new material, and there is a possibility of circumventing the regular hype cycle of the internet. Theoretically, Corgan can be a constant part of the music news cycle since he always has something to promote. The problem, though, is that if there is always some new Pumpkins mp3 going around, it’s not special. It just becomes part of the noise. At the very least, people take it for granted. I’ve been a Smashing Pumpkins fan since I was a young teen and I know that I tuned out for a bunch of these mp3 releases and only recently made a point of catching up with things.

Corgan has said that he’s doing this in part because he feels that audiences don’t care about albums anymore. I can see why he’d feel that way — there’s plenty of evidence to suggest this is true — but I think he has confused things somewhat. Yes, music culture has swung hard in favor of a la carte consumption. This doesn’t mean that people don’t want albums, or that every artist is suddenly a singles act by default. I think that even when people choose to cherry pick songs from records, they still appreciate albums as a unit, as a way of making sense of a discography and understanding the artist’s intentions and chronology. Albums give us something to focus on, something larger than a random song.

If Corgan wanted to — and had the capacity to edit, or had a good editor — he could easily put out a strong, tight album that would have decent commercial prospects and would garner him some renewed critical goodwill. Instead, he’s giving people a steady stream of music with no larger framework to focus on aside from yet another grandiose project that feeds into the perception that he’s lost the plot. It’s a bad way to present the work of a prolific artist.

Get more free songs from the Smashing Pumpkins’ official site.

Weezer “Trainwrecks”

What is a better way? Well, I think Rivers Cuomo has the right idea. Cuomo has embraced a very old-school model that makes better sense for today’s marketplace than just deciding “it’s all single tracks, who cares” and giving up control over presentation. Basically, you get one Weezer album every year, and each album is supported by a single or two. Weezer has always been a singles-oriented artist, so this makes sense — none of these albums are meant to be statements, they’re just collections of songs. You don’t like this one? Oh, well, there will be another one next year. See you then. This is how it was in the 60s and 70s, before labels started to look at albums as long-term platforms to be milked over the course of two or three years. It seems like Cuomo gets just how disposable records are now, and is catering to a market with a very limited attention span. Over the past three Weezer albums, he’s figured out how to get attention for just enough time to promote a new release, and then come back with something new before people start wondering “whatever happened to Weezer?”

It’s cynical, probably, but it looks like Cuomo and his band have been having a blast. In this model, they get to put out a lot of songs — sure, a lot of them suck, but whatever, that’s not the point — and all the silly stuff they do to grab attention is consistent with the character and promotional tactics they’ve been going with since their first album. Maybe they’re being tacky and lame sometimes, but they always seem to be having a good time, and even if he’s largely abandoned the notion of good taste, Cuomo is always pushing himself to try something new, whether it’s encouraging his band mates to write and sing their own songs, swapping off instruments, or collaborating with people outside of the band. As far as I am concerned, he’s still the same terrific singles artist he’s always been, even if tunes like “Memories” and “I’m Your Daddy” are just okay when compared to high water marks like “Say It Ain’t So,” “El Scorcho,” and “Keep Fishin'”. (I quite like the three singles from the Red Album, though.)

At any rate, Cuomo has figured out a system that makes perfect sense for what he does. It’s a smart blend of time-tested record business practices and internet-ready memes. I think this points in the direction of a workable future for pop and rock acts — just keep the music coming in easily-understood bundles, and do what you can to get some attention. Not everything has to be a big deal event, you don’t always have to be making the best record of your career. Have fun with lowered expectations.

Buy it from Amazon.

Vampire Weekend @ Radio City Music Hall 9/15/2010

Holiday / White Sky / Cap Cod Kwassa Kwassa / I Stand Corrected / M79 / Bryn / California English / Cousins / Taxi Cab / Run / A-Punk / One (Blake’s Got A New Face) / I’m Going Down / Diplomat’s Son / I Think Ur A Contra / Giving Up The Gun / Campus / Oxford Comma // Horchata / Mansard Roof / Walcott

Ezra Koenig is an unusual and very likeable frontman for a rock band. He comes off as erudite and polite, but he doesn’t have any of the awkwardness you might expect to along with that. He’s smooth and confident and totally comfortable being himself onstage. In that way, he reminds me of Stephen Malkmus. On the other hand, he’s extremely friendly and inviting, a guy who understands why you may feel self-conscious but encourages you to have a good time. He’s generous and open-hearted. In that way, he’s not much like Malkmus at all, at least in that Malkmus always puts up some kind of aloof front. I think in some ways, Koenig and his band is filling the same cultural niche that Pavement filled in the mid-90s: They’re the super-smart band with accessible tunes that bridge the gap between pop and something a bit more sophisticated. Talking Heads, R.E.M., Pixies, Elvis Costello, Modern Lovers, Belle & Sebastian, Blur — those are just a few of the other bands in this lineage. It’s a very good place to be, culturally. You tend to stick around and mean a lot to people.

Vampire Weekend “California English”

Koenig is a fantastic lyricist, particularly on Contra. He’s become less precious and more precise, filling his verses with evocative concrete detail while avoiding the trap of packing the songs with too many signifiers and not enough heart. He sketches out a recognizable world and fills it with characters and complications, and crucially, he doesn’t judge. He’s not trying to call anyone out. If he’s pointing you at something that may be dubious or potentially corrupt, he’s also asking you to consider that maybe this institution, this person, this cultural practice, whatever, isn’t all bad. Contra is basically optimistic — yes, there are things wrong with class, economics, etc, but pretty much everything in this world is tangled up and we’re all complicit in something negative somewhere along the line. It’s not about looking for an excuse to let people off the hook, but on some level, it’s about trying to humanize people and understand the world rather than living life based on endless variations on an us vs them schism. The songs on Contra are all in some way trying to make sense of this — finding a way to be reasonable in a world of conflict, and there’s no easy answers to be found outside of just trying to see the connections between things and be understanding of complication.

Buy it from Amazon.

Beach House @ Radio City Music Hall 9/15/2010

Walk In The Park / Better Times / Gila / Norway / Silver Soul / Used To Be / Zebra / Take Care / 10 Mile Stereo

Beach House “Norway”

I find it weird that it took me through halfway through this set to finally realize that Victoria Legrand both looks and sounds a bit like Patti Smith. That realization makes some sense of Beach House too — like Patti, they’re going for something dramatic and romantic, but also intimate. They’re not much of a live band, but they sound good in concert, replicating the texture and mood of their current album without seeming too tight and stuffy. Thank goodness for their light show, though. The music stayed more or less the same through the show, but the lights added a necessary sense of dynamics. They waited until “Norway” to introduce a blinking starfield light pattern behind them, but it was well-timed, gorgeous, and incredibly well-suited to the sound of the song — I think I gasped.

Buy it from Amazon.

Dum Dum Girls @ Radio City Music Hall 9/15/2010

Play With Fire / Hey Sis / Catholicked / I Will Be / It Only Takes One Night / Bhang Bhang, I’m A Burnout / Baby Don’t Go / Jail La La / Rest Of Our Lives

Dum Dum Girls “Bhang Bhang, I’m A Burnout”

The last time I saw Dum Dum Girls, it was at the Mercury Lounge. That venue is better for them in terms of size, but Radio City Music Hall served them better in terms of sound. They get a lot of space for their reverb to, well, reverberate. But it’s also more crisp and clear, allowing for a nuance and subtlety that isn’t as evident on their studio recordings. The main revelation of last night’s set was that Dee Dee is a far better singer in concert than she seems to be on record. Her tonality is much sweeter and richer in person. It gave some songs a greater depth, and flattered the contours of her best melodies — the dreamy chorus of “Rest of Our Lives,” the pre-chorus of “Jail La La,” and most especially the “really, it just opens doors I never knew could be” line in “Bhang Bhang, I’m A Burnout.”

Buy it from Amazon.

William Brittelle “Vivid Culture”

“Vivid Culture” starts off with a strange bait and switch. For the first 30 seconds, you might think you’re entering something like an Andrew W.K. album, with some guy shouting about a “vivid culture,” setting you up for something huge and energetic that never comes along. Instead, you get this melancholy orchestral ballad that veers off into prog territory. William Brittelle’s new album runs through different permutations on this oddball brand of soft rock, but this track may be the most compelling, or at least the one that most fully expresses the overall work’s bleak melodrama. The first half of the piece following the intro establishes its protagonist as a lost, lonely, utterly bored man barely getting through life without inspiration. As the song becomes more psychedelic and grandiose, the singer gets drowned out by the music even as he raises he voice, swallowed up by this bigger, louder thing outside of him, making him tiny and irrelevant. It’s a simple metaphor and it’s been done before, but I think it works very well here, particularly in the way the shift in scale is gradual like a camera slowly pulling away from a close-up into a widescreen panorama.

Buy it from Amazon.

Spoon @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 9/13/2010

Car Radio / Nobody Gets Me But You / The Mystery Zone / You Got Yr Cherry Bomb / Trouble Comes Running / The Ghost Of You Lingers / Written In Reverse / Someone Something / Modern World / The Two Sides Of Monsieur Valentine / Don’t You Evah / Finer Feelings / Everything Hits At Once / Don’t Make Me A Target / I Summon You / No Time / Got Nuffin / Black Like Me // Who Makes Your Money / Stay Don’t Go / My Mathematical Mind /// I Turn My Camera On / The Underdog

Do I need to spend more time telling you how brilliant Spoon is; that they are a live rock band with few peers at the moment? This was a set with some nice surprises — “Car Radio” at the start, interesting Wolf Parade and Jay Reatard covers, a particularly spirited version of “Finer Feelings” in the middle, and a slightly under-rehearsed run through one of my top favorites, “The Mystery Zone.” The Music Hall of Williamsburg is a smaller room than they’ve been playing recently, and you can tell — their sound is bigger than the room in some ways, even though their songs make more sense in this sort of intimate setting. I found it odd that they chose to play “My Mathematical Mind” here but not last month at Madison Square Garden. If they had any song built for an arena, that’s the one, but they reserved that for the smallish club where it felt even more towering and epic than usual. Maybe a little perverse, but I like it. It’s Spoon.

Spoon “Written In Reverse”

Try to sing this song and get it right. It’s available at a lot of karaoke bars now, so you can try it for yourself. Do it, and you’ll get a vivid sense of what an incredible rock and roll singer Britt Daniel is. It’s not just the bits where he shreds his vocal cords belting out a chorus full of bitter irony. It’s in every line, he’s always putting an expressive spin on the words, and his voice seems to dance loosely around the tight, overstated downbeat. On paper his words seem a little cryptic, but in context you get exactly how he feels — led on, confused, ready to give up and cut his loses but unwilling to let go of whatever love is keeping him in this awful situation. He sounds thrilled by the drama but totally beaten down by it too. There is so much frustration in this song, but also a fair bit of self-aware humor. The thing that kills here is that he totally gets that it’s funny that he’s still hanging on to this, when there’s nothing there. The song ends on the grim punchline: “I want to show you how I love you / I can see you blankly stare.”

Buy it from Amazon.

Chromeo “When The Night Falls”

“When the Night Falls” is basically a song in which this guy attempts to talk an old flame into a booty call while he’s passing through town. And you know, more power to him. The thing that makes the song charming — aside from some very strong mid-80s style hooks, of course — is how hard he seems to be working to make this happen. He’s suave up to a point, but as the song goes on, I just think “wow, you’re still talking about this, guy?” It’s cute, though. This could easily be a super sleazy song, but it comes out sounding respectful and sorta sweet, and you start to actually buy into the notion that this is all, in fact, very romantic. Okay, maybe he’s full-on suave after all.

Buy it from Amazon.

Black Milk with Royce Da 5’9 and Elzhi “Deadly Medley”

I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out why this song sounded so familiar, and then I just gave up and did a Google search. As it turns out, Black Milk built this track around “Yeah Yeah” by Black Rock, which featured on the Chains & Black Exhaust compilation that came out back in 2002. I hadn’t heard it in at least three years. I like what Black Milk has done with it — the guitar parts have this great worn-yet-sturdy sound, and in the new context, it’s like a pause for deep reflection before one of the rappers digs into a verse. I also appreciate the way the drum fills make it sound like the track is advancing to another plateau, emphasizing incremental movement over momentum.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “Write About Love”

I’m starting to think that Stuart Murdoch is slowly stockpiling songs for an eventual Belle & Sebastian jukebox musical about the drudgery of office life. Surely we could make one just with what we’ve already got, and this title track from the new album. It’s always been a good setting for Murdoch’s characters — romantics stifled by the limitations of ordinary life — and, well, he couldn’t keep writing songs about teenagers, could he? Even still, the moment guest singer Carey Mulligan says that she hates her job on the chorus, it seems too easy and predictable. “Write About Love” is a good song with modest charms, but it doesn’t sound very inspired to me. It sounds like Murdoch doing his regular thing, which is a step backward from the ambition and craft of the band’s previous album The Life Pursuit, which I maintain is their very best collection of songs.

Pre-order it from Amazon.

Interpol “Lights”

The new Interpol album is depressing in a way that is unlike the sadness of their previous work, or really, most other miserable albums. The music itself sounds like extreme clinical depression. Most sad songs are an invitation for the listener to relate, but this stuff shuts you out. It wants nothing to do with you, but it wants you to pay attention to it. It’s like a rock band marching into the ocean, killing itself in the slowest, most melodramatic way possible. It sounds like Interpol destroying the very idea of Interpol, and the image on the cover echoes that notion. Aside from “Lights” it’s not especially good, but it’s fascinating in a morbid sort of way. I have no idea how they can come back from this — it seems like the only good options are to either break up or completely reinvent themselves.

Buy it from Amazon.

My interview with Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music, concludes here. In this part of the conversation we discuss the way radio changes music, the “loudness war”, and some music that Greg thinks is particularly well-recorded. A mix cd featuring all of those songs is included as a .zip at the end of the interview.

Read the rest of this entry »